August 31, 2010

They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but I say them's fighting words! In this post, I'll cover 3 slightly related four character Japanese compounds that I found interesting which all came from war and philosophy-torn ancient China.

Anyways, this yoji comes out of the Hundred Schools of thought period and the wealth of different opinions that were floating around back then. Interestingly, the Chinese government used it in 1956 along with the phrase "Let a hundred flowers bloom" (Chinese:百花運動 Japanese:百花斉放) to encourage debate in the political arena. Some people think it was just to find political dissidents. Mao started it and then shut the sumbich down when people actually used their freedom of speech that he had so graciously given them. We'll talk a little more about a tyrannical ruler with the next yoji, 酒池肉林, below!

This one is also from China, and had a debaucherous context. See ol' king Zhou of Shag (posthumously named King Crupper) liked to line his pool (池) with alcohol and canoe around in it while plucking meat from shish kebab trees (林) . Sometimes he watched his enemies fried alive to work up an appetite for a good orgy. He's known as the worst king that China ever had. I encountered him in a game I play called Dynasty Warriors and he utters his famous yoji every time you successfully and satisfyingly kill him.

August 14, 2010

Been reading The Otaku Encyclopedia recently (buy link US and JP). I met the author briefly once, though he was missing his Goku outfit.

Thought I would post a sample of some of the interesting words from the book. I did my own research on the meanings and origins of the words, because the book, being concise as possible, doesn't get into a lot of detail.

伏せ字/伏字 fuseji (cover+letter): Those symbols that show up whenever someone swears in an anime. Though we are talking about Japanese here, a language with few swears, so what the book fails to mention is they are often used for many other things such as unintelligible utterances. Also used to mention the names and intellectual property of others, like the G○nd○m franchise, without fear of legal retaliation.
Bonus related term from uncle Claytonian: チョメチョメ/xx: A blankety-blank.

間 ma (physical, temporal, or metaphorical space): A thing where the reader/viewer has to fill in what's happening. I think the book is talking about those beats where the camera pans to a bamboo garden pipe filling up, or a glass of ice and beverage, and they suddenly move due to being full or having an ice cube melt respectively. This is the biggest cliche in Japanese media, but it works well to let you know time is going on while seeming profound. Deeeeep.

漫符 manpu (cartoon+sign): Those wacky manga conventions like nosebleeds, big sweat drops, and pulsating angry vein lines that let us know what characters are thinking. One manpu I have never understood is Osamu Tezuka's little pig guy manpu. What is that?

ヲタク (w)otaku: I like this alternative spelling of otaku (seriously, I don't need to define this one for you, right?) a lot, because the older generations just don't get it. The hard core kids use this one. Maybe.

In the book, there is an interview with Okada Toshio, one of the otaku ledgends behind daikon. By his definition I am an otaku, studying Japanese culture and language. Yay?

オタ芸 otagei (otaku+performance art): Those dance moves and shouts that the audience performs during idoru shows. If you get a chance, check out the otagei at the end of the movie Kisaragi or the movie Densen Uta (both are awesome).

Look up the book! In the meantime, enjoy the Daikon IV video to get yourself in the right mindframe:

Recently I heard from my older friends that an American orchestral group was touring Japan and playing the Tommy Polka. Puzzled, I looked further into the subject. Turns out Tommy was Tateishi Onojiro, a seventeen year old member of a delegation of besworded samurai that visited America in 1860. Tateishi soon got the attention, a nickname, and a polka titled after his new moniker. These days he would get a parody song and novelty ringtone, but they had class in those days. The New York Times has a good rundown of the the whole thing here. They say:

Tommy was sort of the Robert Pattinson of his day, a heartthrob who had women swooning. “From Washington Heights to East Broadway, Tommy is already a household word,” Vanity Fair gushed. Lapping up the adulation, the young man mugged for the crowds and blew kisses to them, in stark contrast to the iron faces who formed the rest of the Japanese delegation.

They also provided a Walt Witman poem made for the event (it's so long!):

The Errand-Bearers (1860)

Over sea, hither from Niphon,
Courteous, the Princes of Asia, swart-cheek’d
princes,
First-comers, guests, two-sworded princes,
Lesson-giving princes, leaning back in their open
barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
This day they ride through Manhattan.

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I
behold pass, in the procession, along with the
Princes of Asia, the errand-bearers,
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or
in the ranks marching;
But I will sing you a song of what I behold,
Libertad.

When million-footed Manhatten, unpent,
descends to its pavements,
When the thunder cracking guns arouse me with
the proud roar I love,
When the round-mouth’d guns, out of the smoke
and smell I love, spit their salutes,
When the fire-flashing guns have fully alerted me
—When heaven-clouds canopy my city with a
delicate thin haze,
When, gorgeous, the countless straight steams, the
forests at the wharves, thicken with colors,
When every ship is richly drest, and carrying her
flag at the peak,
When pennants trail, and festoons hang from the
windows,
When Broadway is entirely given up to foot-
passers and foot-standers—When the mass is
densest,
When the facades of the houses are alive with
people—When eyes gaze, riveted, thens of
thousands at a time,
When the guests, Asiatic, from the islands
advance—When the pageant moves forward,
visible,
When the summons is made—When the answer
that waited thousands of years, answers,
I too, arising, answering, descend to the pavements,
merge with the crowd, and gaze with them.

August 13, 2010

Sometimes I feel lots of nostalgia for bygone days in Japan, though I was not even here. Books often bring that feeling to me. Used book store Book Off presented me with an awesome sale recently, and I could not resist. Vid:

So let's talk about some of the books I found. Note that I will be throwing out Amazon links to line my blogging coffers, but to be honest if you live in Japan you should just go out to your own local Book Off store and pick one up.

One series that I have now completed my collection of is the Ringu series. You may recall I reviewed a translation of one of Koji Suzuki's books a while back, and I'm eager to read the books that inspired one of my favorite movies (The Ring).
If you are down, here's the amazon.co.jp links for the books:リング, らせん, ループ, and バースデイ
Or their respective translations on Amazon.comRing, Spiral, Loop, and Birthday
If you want a compelling review of the series, I recommend Sarudama's blog.

Then there are the TRPG and gaming books I've found under the Sneaker Bunko imprint of Kadokawa. Most of them are replays, or transcripts of tabletop (table talk in Japanese parlance) role playing sessions. The series that started this trend is Record of Lodos War. Here's the link to the first book. Unfortunately, the original sessions, based of OD&D were only in magazines AFAIK, and they decided to make an entirely new rules system so that they could more legally publish the series. So, basically the same, but the players are probably not all brilliant SF writers like in the original. Would love to get my hands on those original articles.

Another series that seems to be popular in the replays is GURPs. I've never played GURPs myself, but it's not that hard to follow the replays. Here's one of the books I picked up.

August 8, 2010

I don't know if anybody follows the karaoke posts, but I love to entertain and challenge myself with them, while providing little discoveries about Japanese pop culture. In fact, I really like the karaoke posts the best of all the nonsense I put out on the interbone. For instance, remember the time I discovered The Nolans were big here? The freaking Nolans. And Webster! We've just pulled into awesome city.

For a long time, I've been wanting to find a way to tell y'all about how ridiculously popular The Ventures are over here in Japan. You probably don't know their name off the top of your head because they never sing in their songs and are thus easily forgotten, but you know this song even if you think you don't, Walk Don't Run:

They also do the Wipe Out! song. But alas, as The Ventures never have vocals in their songs, even when they do songs that should have them, I thought I would never be able to pull off a karaoke post on them. But Japan has foreseen my problem and taken care of it! I give you The Ventures... plus Chiyo Okumura in Kitaguni no Aoi Sora (titled Hokkaido Skies in English): EDIT youtube nerfs karaoke vids all the time, so I'm embedding a new one. It happens to have 3 songs instead of just the one originally told of in this post.

That's The Ventures playing along with her, but it feels pretty different from most of their hits here (maybe the band's instrumental, non-enkaized version will be better for some). Turns out that The Ventures's songs, which were actually catering to Japanese listeners, were sometimes released with Japanese vocals over here. Wikipedia has a bit to say about why:

The Ventures became one of the most popular groups worldwide thanks in large part to their instrumental approach—there were no language barriers to overcome. The Ventures are still the most popular American rock group in Japan, the world's second largest record market. One oft-quoted statistic is that the Ventures outsold The Beatles 2-to-1 in Japan.[1] They produced dozens of albums exclusively for the Japanese and European markets, and have regularly toured Japan from the 1960s through to the present. According to a January 1966 Billboard Magazine article, The Ventures had five of 1965's top 10 singles in Japan.

Note that Wikipedia's picture of The Ventures also has them in Japanese garb. From the J wiki, I learned that their song Ginza Lights was released with words as Futari no Ginza. Here it is:

Much more venturesish. Up for one more? Kyoto Doll became Kyoto no Koi in the hands of Yuko Nagisa. You can actually hear the announcer and the see credits both mention The Ventures in this vid:

The Ventures received the prestigious Order of the Rising Sun (an honor second only to that chrysanthemum prize thing) this year. Seeing as they've played their songs like a billion times by now I'd say that award is well earned.

August 6, 2010

Lately I have been doing the Vlog Every Day in August thing. Youtuber TheHill88 inspired me to do it. I've respected her opinion ever since she listed me in The Hot Guys of YouTube video she made. That vid was taken down, but it totally happened.

Anyways, there is some minor Japan content in these, so I feel comfortable posting them on this, my was once a brooding artist blog turned Japan blog. Enjoy tales of interviews and orange drinks with orange cheese flavor. Leave questions like everyone else has been spontaneously doing. Wonder about the meaning of life. In Japan.

August 3, 2010

Not too long ago in Motomachi, Tokyo, I and the girlfriendal unit discovered a pasta restaurant called Goemon (五右衛門*), where they call pasta 洋麺 (yomen, an industry word from western+noodle). I highly recommend the chain. We had some green pasta with avocados mixed in, and it was awesome.

Since then, I have made my own avocado pasta a couple times. I simply make a basil-based noodle dish and add avocado bits.

I'm not the only one out there experimenting with green pastas. Here we can see a YouTuber, Megwin, try out his own recipe which involves a lot of shiso leaves:

Megwin complains in Japanese that the result lacks umami. Umami is technically an English word because we haven't been able to come up with a better one than umami, which is a distinct taste discovered by a Japanese dude in 1908. He went on to the company Ajinomoto, which has an eponymous seasoning product that you probably know as MSG. Maybe if Megwin had used a little more MSG, he could have brought out the umami of his dish.

Anyways, I recommend green pasta sometime to you guys.
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*I cannot figure out why Go-e-mon is spelled with four kanji characters but the sounds seem to be one too few. That's not how Japanese usually works. But an alternative spelling offered by wikichan is 五衛門, so I guess that extra character is silent. EDIT: Googled my way to this answer soon after publishing this article.
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Bonus vid: Me trying Shiso Pepsi